


Out of Range

by Regency



Series: Natural Fit [2]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe, Case Fic, F/M, Gen, M/M, may be ooc, old fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 10:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4622079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regency/pseuds/Regency
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Peter’s made a career out of making people want him.  It’d be foolish to change a working model.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Range

**Author's Note:**

> Based on characterization up to _Vital Signs_.

                Peter was good at being pursued. He’d made coaxing unsuspecting marks into the chase an art form.  He gave every indication of being nothing more than a reserved, self-conscious fellow, as uneasy in his skin as in courtship.  And to some degree, that was all true.  His unease in romance had never been a contrivance; he felt stunted in the presence of beauty and tongue-tied in the gun sights of a quick wit.  But, he’d adapted in his early years and developed a strategy to compensate for the weaknesses he’d never managed to overcome.

                Those he wanted, he provoked. Be it with an uncharacteristically bold word or just a look, those he provoked would latch onto him with an intensity that seemed to surprise even them. It had never surprised him, though. Not after the first time, when he was twenty and earnest and desperately in thrall with his Philosophy professor.  He had poured his heart into every assignment, yet never attempted to make his feelings known.  She’d been unearthly. He’d been a soul without a compass.  She’d given him a map and a kiss, telling him to turn his keen mind to the troubles of the world and solve them.

El had never known that for six years that same professor had traveled the roads of that map with him or that her guidance had surpassed a dozen kisses in days, and overshadowed all he thought he’d ever know about love in months.  That woman had supplanted the sun in Peter Burke’s sky until the day a cooling shell where a soul should be had supplanted her.  An extortion scheme gone awry. Sex, lies, and candid camera had doomed more than a barely-solvent family business.  _She was just buying candles. Who gets shot at a candle store_ , he’d asked himself so many times that even the anguish brought to bear by the senselessness of it all was rote.  It stung no less, regardless.

Peter had been left with her beloved collection of crumbling philosophy texts and a future that seemed so bleak he nearly drowned his graduate thesis in tears and alcohol.  To the end of his life, he doubted he’d ever remember how he’d held up long enough to defend it.  She’d been the ghost in the room that day and in hundreds of rooms for hundreds of days afterward.

She’d chased him and others had followed.  They didn’t know that she’d blazed the trail, that she’d trained him up in the way he should go and, all his life-long, he had never diverted from it.  He’d been luring the objects of his affection toward him since her, willfully _and_ subconsciously, and they always came.

Like Elizabeth.

Like Neal.

Like Lauren Cruz, who ably reconciled the somewhat bumbling role he played with his track record.

Like Reese Hughes who gave his insane, ingenious ideas a second glance because of the same.

Peter was used to being underestimated, but he was also used to being adored.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own any characters recognizable as being from White Collar. They are the property of their producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun. I don’t own those lovely quotes that I make passing reference to either, but I’m sure you’ll recognize them.


End file.
